Suppose one could see a computer screen but not the hardware and software that created it. If the changes on the screen occur in bit units, does that mean that unseen bit particles create them? In fact, the screen changes in bit units because the bit is the basic unit of the processing behind the screen. Likewise, electro-magnetic effects on the screen of our space can occur in photon units because the photon is the basic unit of the processing that changes the screen.
In this model, quantum processes create physical effects and the photon is the basic network process, so changes in electro-magnetism occur in photon units for the same reason that computer screens change in bit units. What looks like photon particles acting could then be a basic process instead. The correlation we see between photons and electro-magnetism doesn’t imply causation, and confusing correlation with causation is the oldest error in science (Note 1).
Processing that explores every option doesn’t need agents to push it, so an electron that falls to a lower energy orbit doesn’t need an orbit boson to make it so. The forces that physics attributes to imaginary particles can be explained by quantum processing as follows:
1. Electromagnetism. The standard model needs virtual photons to explain electro-magnetism, but a processing model just lets a photon be the basic quantum process. No virtual agents are then needed to explain electrical and magnetic effects (Chapter 5).
2. The strong effect. The standard model needed a new field that created eight gluons with three charges to explain how the nucleus holds together, but a processing model just lets quarks share photons to achieve stability. Again, no virtual agents are needed (4.4.4).
3. The weak effect. The standard model needed another field, three more bosons, and two new charges to explain how neutrons decay, and still couldn’t explain why protons don’t decay in empty space. In contrast, a processing model just lets neutron decay be a neutrino effect, and predicts that protons only decay in stars. Again, no virtual agents are needed (4.4.6).
4. The Higgs. If W-bosons don’t exist, the Higgs boson isn’t needed at all. It is just another species the already over-flowing menagerie of particles that had no role in the evolution of matter, so yet another virtual particle that adds nothing new to our knowledge is avoided (4.4.7).
5. Gravity. Every attempt to find gravitons has failed but standard model iconographies still display them as if they were real (Figure 4.17). But if gravity alters space and time, as Einstein says, how can particles that exist in space and time do that? In contrast, Chapter 5 attributes gravity to a processing gradient.
A processing model explains what the standard model does without virtual particles, so they are unnecessary agents that needn’t exist at all. And even if they did, the standard model tells us nothing about them. For example, if the Higgs acts on weak bosons to give mass, how do other bosons interact? A quark can be subject to electromagnetic, strong, weak, Higgs, and gravity forces, so what will happen if a virtual photon, gluon, weak boson, Higgs, and graviton appear at the same time? The standard model doesn’t say. Also matter bosons imply anti-matter versions, so what happens if a Higgs meets an anti-Higgs? Again the standard model doesn’t predict anything, so physics is better off without it.
Note 1. The number of ice-creams sold in America correlates with deaths by drowning, so do ice-creams kill? In Europe, number of stork nests correlates with human babies born, so do storks bring babies? In both cases, X and Y correlate because both are caused by a third agent Z, namely the weather, not because they cause each other. Correlation is not causation.